The role of the Yakut newspaper «Kyym» in the formation of ethnic identity

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the functioning of the ethnic press in the multinational Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), in which representatives of more than 130 nationalities live. In particular, on the basis of the concepts “ethnos” and “ethnic journalism” that have developed in modern science, the role of the Yakut newspaper “Kyym” in the formation of ethnic identity and the preservation of national culture and language is investigated. The role of ethnic journalism is to help an ethnos not only preserve and strengthen national traditions and moral values through culture, but also comprehend its place in the modern world. It also makes it possible for any ethnic group to learn more about other people’s living nearby, their customs and traditions, religion and culture. The “Kyym” publication we are studying is a Yakut weekly newspaper. The newspaper is published in printed form in the Yakut language and has an online version. The founder of the newspaper “Kyym” is LLC media group “Sitim”. Researchers believe that the predecessor of “Kyym” is undoubtedly the newspaper “Manchaary”, the first issue of which was published on December 28, 1921. Two years later it was decided to make the newspaper periodic and give it the new name “Kyym” (“Spark”). Since 2003, “Kyym” has positioned itself as a “national newspaper”, readers of which are native speakers of the Yakut language, according to approximate estimates there are about 500 thousand of them. In 2013, the circulation of the newspaper “Kyym” reached more than 33 thousand copies, which in itself is a wonderful fact in the ethnic press. At present, the newspaper is an individual, unique type of ethnic newspaper, in which modern genres of journalistic publications of various problems of the development of society and the purity of Yakut speech with various lexical norms of the literary language are intertwined. On the pages of the newspaper “Kyym”, all borrowings are written in accordance with the law of the phonetics of the Yakut language, that is, obedience to the rules of the Yakut grammar is observed. In general, the language of the newspaper in a certain sense is a kind of barometer of various trends in language development, since journalism is at the forefront of social development. The world characterized by migration, transnational networks and global flows creates new conditions for the formation of identity, and the ethnic newspaper Kyym, as the media, promotes the rapprochement, mutual understanding and development of the identity of